Page 70 of A Sunwoven Ascent

They had taken Holden too.

He reached for Evelyne again through the bond, pushing hard enough to make his vision blur. Nothing answered. No warmth. No tether pulling him back to her.

He tried the alpha line next, reaching for Holden. Just silence.

But she was not dead. He knew it with bone-deep certainty. The bond was weakened, but not severed.

“We haven’t seen or scented them,” Nathan said carefully, and something like pity flickered in his eyes.

Kaldrek’s lip curled. He did not want pity. He wanted blood.

“Gather another search group,” he ordered, hardening his voice into steel. “Rotate the others to rest. I want scouts posted at all times.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

Heidara kept pace at his side, with Alaric close behind and Cillian just beside him. Fear hung over the pack like a storm as Kaldrek relived the attack again and again in his mind. It had been swift. Coordinated. There had not been a single chance to reach Evelyne before they got to her.

He had smelled her blood, the trace still burned in his memory. But the trail had ended without warning, swallowed by mud and hints of blood magic. They had fed on her, he knew it. The thought dragged something feral up from deep inside him. For that alone, he would kill every Noskari still drawing breath.

“You need to rest, Heidara,” he said sharply.

“I will not,” she snapped back.

He understood.

“Then tend to the wounded,” he amended, trying to steady his tone. “Lorena is still bleeding. Help her.”

The edge in his voice was unfair, and he knew it. Rage bled into everything now.

He had let himself be drawn away. That was the truth of it. The whispers had started softly this time, barely audible as they threaded through the trees like smoke. They had called him by name. Spoken of his mother. Of his blood. Of the strength beneath his wolf. They spoke of Velenshire as though it belonged to him. As though he belonged to it.

They promised answers. Power. Home.

It was all so perfectly distracting. He should have ignored them. He should have known better. But he hesitated for just a few seconds, and it cost him.

By the time he realized he had been led too far from the pack, the darkness had shifted and thickened behind him, in the direction he had come from. Then they moved fast, like a plague carried on the wind, straight to her and Holden.

A warning was all he had managed to send through the bond. A single command.

Too late.

He failed her. He failed Holden. He failed his pack.

Kaldrek sank into a crouch, head bowed over the blood-darkened ground. He no longer cared what the pack saw. Bravery was useless here. Authority was useless. Nothing mattered except finding her. If he had been stronger, if he had been better at sensing them, better at wielding what little power had awakened in him, perhaps this never would have happened. But they had taken her in seconds, and he had been left with nothing.

One moment he had been running toward her. The next, pain and weakness had flooded through him, not his own, but hers. He had heard the pack shouting. Heard the fight. Then silence.

And she was gone.

Holden too.

A savage sound threatened to break from him. He wanted blood. He wanted to tear the nearest Noskari apart with his bare hands. Fury surged through him, hot enough to choke on, but he crushed it down.

Rage would not find her.

Clarity might.

He inhaled slowly, steadying himself. He would find her. He would tear the world apart if he had to.